Hell Froze Over…Twice (Courtney Was Late and Robbie Was On-time)
Note: Courtney’s been really busy getting ready for the last week of school, so yours truly (Robbie/Goober) gets to blog again. Sweet!
Friday was supposed to be picture day. But there was some miscommunication and Courtney ended up getting to the trail head late (we were supposed to meet at 4:00pm). I got to the trailhead at 4:00, but when Courtney wasn’t there, I sent her a page (she’s rarely late). I got a reply that she had gone to school and forgot to text message me. She said to give her 30 minutes and she would be at the trailhead.
I had some time, so I decided to explore the other side of the bridge that marks our starting point. Since we have a new found desire to ride off-road, I was curious to see if there were more trails past the bridge. I was in luck; I found a nice trail that went over all kinds of terrain, from soft sand to bark from chopped down trees. I rode for about 5 minutes, but decided it would be more fun if Courtney went with me. So I turned around and went back to the trailhead. There was a lot of traffic…rush hour and all, and Courtney didn’t get to the trailhead until 5:30pm.
She didn’t have her skirt or camera, which meant we couldn’t take pictures, so we just rode out to the spot on the river. We rode to the 4.5 mile marker and turned onto the newly found trail. We rode down the paved path to the point where it goes off-road. I was following behind Courtney, preparing to peddle hard through the soft sand when all of a sudden she stopped and shouted that a bug was in her ear. Fortunately I was back far enough that I managed to stop (in the soft sand no doubt) before running her over.
By the time I had stopped, she had retrieved the offending bug from her ear and showed me the bug that was “trying to eat my brain”… It was a little tiny bug that looked of the beetle variety. I told her that it was too small to be of any danger to her, and it probably wouldn’t have made past the ear wax. I was then informed that her ears are very well maintained and don’t contain any of the potentially life saving wax. Well, she then took revenge on the bug for all the trouble it had caused and we continued down the trail to the river spot…well, I rode; she walked her bike because of the soft sand. 
When we got there, we noticed the river was a little high, but we managed to find the spot.
Courtney had to check the water level again, so off with her socks and shoes and into the river she went. She looked for the sand bar she had previously found, but it was underwater. I suggested she just use the sand bar that was four feet to her left. Well, I actually just pointed at the sand bar. She thought I was pointing to a sand bar much farther up the river and for the next few minutes we argued about which sand bar I was pointing at. She finally decided she liked the sand bar a few feet to her left (the one I had been point at the whole time). I yelled out, “You’re killing me!* That’s the one I’ve been point to the whole time…” lol. She made her way back to shore, and I retrieved a towel from my pack that I had brought for her to dry her feet off with.
Everything looked ok, so we decided to come back the next day and take the pictures.
(Usually Courtney posts her blood sugar numbers here, but again she didn’t tell me…)
We rode 12.5 miles in about an hour and 10 minutes (I finally got my speedometer/odometer to read in MPH). Again we averaged 13.3 MPH, which will set us up nicely for the ride in California.
* Quote used with permission of Courtney (except in cases where I’m killing her)
Just Because We Can, Doesn’t Mean We Should
Note: Courtney is feeling lazy today, so I Robbie (Goober) get to write the entry for our ride today.
Our ride started out like most, except this time I had installed a speedometer/odometer on my bike so we could see how fast and how far we were going. Of course I lived up to my nickname and accidentally reset the entire meter while trying to reset the odometer. When I got the tire size and time corrected, I noticed it was reading in KPH (kilometers per hour). Try as I might, I could not get it into MPH (which is sad because I can program a VCR in no time, but this little meter had me stumped). Needless to say, I spent the rest of the ride calling out speeds and distances in kilometers…
After the little incident, we finally got riding. After about a kilometer, the wind started picking up. Let me tell you, riding in the wind sucks, and here in Albuquerque, it’s always a head wind…no matter which direction you are riding.
We made it to our 4 mile marker and Courtney decided we had ridden far enough for the day. I still had a lot of ride left in me, and since we have to push each other, I reminded her of how far we had ridden (eight or nine kilometers). She mulled it over for a sec and decided she could make it to 8.5 mile marker. We never got there. About half a kilometer past our 4 mile marker we came to a fork in the road. Normally we ride on the west side of the irrigation ditch, but lately on our way back, we’ve been riding on the east side of the ditch. At this fork, we had the option to cross over a bridge and ride on the east side, or continue straight. That’s when Courtney noticed another paved trail to our right, heading east toward the river. This new trail peaked our curiosity, and it wasn’t long before we decided to go on a mission of exploration.
We rode on the new trail for a ways until it ended in a loop. Courtney noticed a dirt trail continuing past the paved trail and took off down it. I followed, but noticed that we were riding in soft sand (that soft sand where if it’s too deep, you just sit in one place spitting sand behind you until you get off your bike and walk it the rest of the way). So I yelled out, “Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.” But it fell on deaf ears. Of course when you’re riding a mountain bike, you’re always itching for the trail off the beaten path, so off I went to catch up with her. We followed the trail until we reached the river. We met a woman and her young son, who warned us not to get too close to the river or we might fall in, and the woman informed us the trail kind of follows the edge of the river. The bushes and trees were pretty thick, so we dismounted and pushed our bikes along the trail some more until we found we couldn’t go any more. Courtney wanted to see how deep the water was, so we parked our bikes and walked down to the river bank.
Now I didn’t find out until later why she wanted to see how deep the water was, but before I knew it she was out of both sock and shoes, and had one leg in the water trying to find the bottom. She couldn’t find it, so we walked back to where the woman and boy had been (they had left by then). It was shallow enough at that point that the water only came up to her shorts. She made her way about six yards to a sand bar in the middle of the river and proclaimed herself king [queen, ruler] of the sand bar. She like the backdrop of the river and trees behind her, and decided that was the spot she was going to have her graduation pictures taken. After she was done playing in the water, she made her way back to the bank. I offered my hand to help her out of the water, or keep her balance while she was cleaning the mud off and putting her socks and shoes on, but she reminded me she was “Miss Independent”. I told her she can be Miss Independent all she wants, but I’ll still always offer my help.
After our fun at the river, we made our way back to the 4 mile marker, which also happens to be a main road to look for a place to park for when we come back to take those graduation pictures. We didn’t find a place to park, but we did find another dirt trail that took us in back of several ranches (we got that itch again for off-roading). The ride back to our cars was uneventful, but I have a feeling we’ll be doing a lot more off-roading, and exploring on our subsequent rides.
(Normally Courtney lists her blood sugars status here, but she didn’t tell me what her starting or stopping numbers were, so I can only assume they were in the normal range)
We rode ~21 kilometers (Courtney calculated it to be 15.87 miles) in an hour and 10 minutes, but there was at least 20 minutes of fun in/by the river, and another 10 minutes looking for a place to park on Montano. When we were riding, we averaged 21 KPH (~13 MPH) which is exactly how fast we need to ride in California.
At the time, it seemed like a really good idea
Since we’ve only ridden just over 31 miles once and we need to be sure that we can ride 35 miles for CA I decided that we’d do our 17 mile route twice today. I wanted to do it twice instead of going the full length of the trail because once you pass this one part of the trail, I get creeped out.
So I tell Robbie my thought about just doing the 17 miles twice and he tells me that it’s not going to happen because we’ll get back to our starting point, which means we’ll be feet from our cars, and we won’t want to turn around and do it again. He was right. I worked us hard, we did the 17 miles in just under an hour (58 minutes) and when we got to our starting/turn-around point, I was beat and didn’t want to turn around.
I’m half of a serious cyclist
The other day when my blood sugar went low on my ride, I didn’t blog about the most important detail of that ride and that was that it was my first ride after going clipless. I was out there on the trail looking half professional, I was clipless (if that makes no sense to you, you have to read this).
I did well out there on the trail. I didn’t crash and burn, at no point was I unable to clip out (that’s probably not the proper terminology) of my pedal. And if you look past all the bad stuff about that ride (the high/low blood sugars), it was a sweet ride. That, and I’m now half of a serious cyclist.
And me being on the path of serious cycling, that’s the most important part of that ride. Because it means that I’m meeting my goals of overcoming the limitations of diabetes. It means that even though the darn disease causes me heartburn on a regular basis, I’m still gonna do what I want to do. Right now, that’s cycling.
How many breaks does it take to make Robbie happy?
We may never know.
Robbie, he’s a whiner. That’s nothing new, today, once again he was complaining about the lack of breaks. Breaks are an issue with him, he thinks he should get more. We’ve heard this before.
We were discussing the whole break issue along our ride today. We usually take one break, a 5 minute break at the halfway point, the halfway point is never exactly known though. So one 5 minute break on a normal day. On a bad day, like last Tuesday, an insanely windy day where we’re riding in a high gear of 1 and a low gear of 3-6 we get more breaks, I think we had 3 took three.
Anyhow, we were discussing breaks, and what it came down to, is that we’re training, and if we keep stopping for breaks we’re not training to our full potential. If we take one break along our ride here in NM, we’ll do well in CA where we have the opportunity to take 2 breaks. You have to train harder than you expect to ride, that way you’re prepared for whatever may come your way.
Today several breaks came our way. Thank you very much to poorly managed blood sugars. It wasn’t my fault, honestly. I switched my pump site, and it so did not like my leg, and it let me know. My blood sugar was high an hour and a half before I began my ride, I took a shot to cover for it, at ride time, I was a whole 20 points lower than the hour and a half prior so I didn’t get to eat my usual Clif bar (very depressing that was).
At one point, I was riding slow and I knew it, I didn’t have the energy that I normally have, I attributed it to the high blood sugar, that was so not the case. At the half point for the day, my blood sugar was 41 (that’s very low for me) so I traded my hammer gel for Robbie’s snickers. I ate that and we rode the few miles back to where there was a sonic. When we got there, I was 57. I got to eat a grilled cheese and a hot fudge shake (eating like this before cycling is so not recommended, but I had too).
Needless to say, our 27 miles took us 3 hrs and then some instead of the 2 hrs it would normally take us. My blood sugars were a royal wreck and Robbie got several breaks. It wasn’t the most enjoyable ride. But I rode anyways.
Gone Clipless
If you’re not someone that’s big into the biking scene, this makes no sense. It made absolutely no sense to me. In fact, I was told that it’s retrospective, and being so, I had to have it explained. As such, I’m going to explain it to you. But first, I have to tell a bit of my story.
As you know (if you’ve read prior entries) my friend Mark in MN is a massive biker (or cyclist, I’m not sure what he prefers to be called) and he told me that I needed to go clipless. I firmly explained to him that we had already had this conversation and that I was remaining clipless. Clipping into my pedals was not something that I wanted to experience again, because the very first time that I ever tried it, I unclipped the wrong foot and fell over. Falling over while still clipped into my bike was not something I wanted to experience ever again. Not only is it embarrassing, but it hurts. That’s when he said that the term was retrospective, I didn’t ask what that meant because as far as I was concerned, the case was closed.
But then, I decided that if it meant that I was going to exert less energy and tire not as quickly, I was going to get pedals to clip into and shoes to go with them. He ordered me pedals (crank bros egg beater sl’s) and some shoes (Answer - Speeder) and they came on Thursday.
I got to put the pedals on my bike and try out the shoes today. But first, it was important for me to know the logic behind going clipless (because as far as I was concerned, I was still clipping in). In my search for this all important logic, I found Graham’s site goclipless.com. And it was from Graham, that I got my logic. And I quote:
“Often you will see pedals that have a ‘cage’ attached where you put your foot to secure it in the pedal. Those ‘cages’ are called Toe Clips. I guess when the first pedals that integrated your shoe to the bike came out their major benefit was that you no longer needed toe clips. Therefore, they were touted as being ‘clipless.’ Of course, it is ironic when you end up clipping in to clipless pedals. A better name for them probably should be something like ‘integrated’ pedals.”
Thanks to Graham, I now had the logic behind my “clipless” pedals and install them on my bike. When I got done putting my sweet looking pedals on my bike I had to put on my “toes feel claustrophobic” shoes and take the bike for a test ride. (I really didn’t want to get stuck in my pedals on the trail) It was just a quick spin around the block and I didn’t have any problems unclipping. In fact, I had more problems trying to get clipped in. It’s exciting, I’ve gone clipless.
It’s Called Perseverance
The wind is horrible today, we’re talking about winds between 30-50 mph. It wasn’t quite like that when I loaded my bike onto my car this morning. I had every intention of riding today because I hadn’t ridden since Thursday. By mid morning, I had decided that I wasn’t going riding. Robbie didn’t have the same thoughts:
Me: It’s pretty windy out there, I don’t think we’re going riding today.
Robbie: Not even to Montano?
Me: Fine, we can go to Montano.
Robbie: The winds are only 38-54 mph…
Robbie: Maybe we won’t go riding today.
Me: Not even to Montano?
Robbie: Ok, we can ride to Montano.
Jokingly, I txt one of my other friends, whom I know would say no to riding given the weather conditions, and asked if she wanted to go riding.
Me: Wanna ride 8 miles this afternoon?
Friend: Absolutely not! It’s way too windy.
Me: Only 38 to 54 mph. It’s called conditioning 
Friend: It’s called a death wish.
Me: It’s called perseverance
Friend: For you. For me it’s survival.
On my way to the trail, the wind was crazy. I was in my car fighting it, you could feel it pushing the car off the road. I really only had every intention to ride 8 miles. We ended up going 31.6 miles, almost the full length of the trail, in the crazy wind. In one direction we fought a side wind, and had a bit of a tail wind, and sometimes had a head wind. Coming back was hideous, we mostly had a head wind, fought the side wind (that tried to knock us off the trail) and rarely had a tail wind.
This is how it went:
Montano (4.2 miles):
Capitán Runt: We’re doing ok, let’s keep going
I-40 (7.2 miles):
Capitán Runt: Let’s go to Central
Central (8.5 miles):
Capitán Runt: We’re going to regret it if we keep going
Goober: Let’s go to Bridge
Bridge (10.3 miles):
Capitán Runt: We might as well go to Rio Bravo
Rio Bravo (13.7 miles):
Goober: We get a break here right?
Capitán Runt: We might as well finish the trail, it’s only another 3 miles, you can take a break at the end
2nd Street (15.8 miles)
Capitán Runt: We can break now
Our time to 2nd Street, an hour 5 minutes. We braked for 5 minutes at the end of the trail, took care of the usual business (check the blood sugar, eat a snack, rest a moment)
We regretted going the full length of the trail the entire way back. We got all of a mile before the head wind got a hold of us. We spent the majority of the way back whining and complaining because we were riding in such pathetic gears it was unimpressable. (High 1 Low 3-7). We kept asking who’s idea this was. In the end it got blamed on Robbie because I really didn’t want to go riding today anyways and he’s the one that encouraged it.
We were nice and exhausted by the time we got back to our cars, our faces were wind chapped, our muscles hurt, both of us were having knee issues, and our toes were numb. Despite all we had to complain about, it was a good ride, and although at times it was a fight for survival and the determination to not throw in the towel and take the train back to our starting point but to continue going was lagging, we finished our ride.
What I did realize though, is that because today’s riding conditions were far worse than those of Sunday’s when I didn’t go riding because the “wind had picked up”, I no longer have an excuse no to go riding. Because I can do it. I proved it, 31.6 miles in miserable conditions.
Stats for this ride:
Distance: 31.6 miles
Ride Time: 2 hrs 40 min
Avg Speed: 11.85 mph (the lack of speed is all the wind’s fault)
The general note about my diabetes: Cycling is grand with my insulin pump. As long as I stop every hour to check my blood and eat a hammer gel, we’re good to go. I started the ride with a Clif Bar and a blood sugar of 104 and at both my 1 hr and 2 hr checks I was in the 80’s. I couldn’t ask for better cooperation with my diabetes than I’m getting with my pump.
Thwarted By The Weather…Twice
New Mexico weather just amazes me, and it shouldn’t because I’ve lived here for the past 19 years, but regardless, it does. It was 78 degrees when Robbie and I went riding on Thursday. Yesterday, it snowed. We knew it was going to be cold. It was only supposed to be in the upper 50’s, not a problem, we were going to go riding anyhow. We’d just wear long sleeve shirts instead of short sleeve shirts, seriously, not a problem. But no, this morning I wake up early, and it’s all of 20 some odd degrees. We didn’t go riding, the sky was black and the wind was blowing. And at the same time we would’ve been half way through our ride, it started snowing and it continued to snow well past the time that would’ve marked the completion of our ride. We didn’t get to ride at all Saturday.
Today, Sunday, Easter Sunday. It was cold and cloudy this morning sitting out on the aluminum benches at the football stadium for sunrise service, but by the time I decided I was bored and I wanted to go riding, it was nice. So I go put shorts on, put up my hair, go to the kitchen to fill up the bladder for my backpack and I look out the window. It’s windy and there’s no sun. 5 minutes prior it was sunny and not so windy.
It depresses me when I can only make 1 ride during the week. And we’re going on two weeks now that I’ve only ridden once each week. *sigh*
Team Goober and Runt
Robbie is a goober, and I let him know that today while we were riding today. And he agreed. He even went as far as to tell me the gooberish acts he had done earlier today. But at one point we’re riding along and I say “you goober!” and then this conversation follows:
Robbie: “I am not a chocolate covered peanut, maybe a chocolate covered raisin but not a peanut”
Courtney: “If you want to be a shriveled up raisin, go for it.”
Robbie: “Maybe I’m some other fruit.”
Courtney: “You’re a nut”
Robbie: “Fine, if I have to be a goober, you have to be a candy too, Runt.”
Courtney: “I am not a runt.”
Robbie: “Well, there’s always nerds, gobstoppers…”
Courtney: “I AM NOT a nerd.”
Robbie: “No, you’re a runt, you’re always saying how your legs are shorter than mine.”
Courtney: “Well they are.”
Robbie: “You don’t have to be a runt.”
Courtney: “No, it’s ok, I am a runt.”
We have such nice conversations when we’re on the trail cycling along in high winds whining and complaining about anything we can think of. Today, Team Goober and Runt was founded. And while it may not make sense to many without the background of this story, it sounds so much better than some of the other team names we were coming up with.
There’s a headwind in both directions
We’re back in the saddle after a week of not riding thanks to a sinus infection. It was a rough night but we kept going and made it 27 miles. Rough for me not for Robbie, but I’m not here to whine tonight. There were some changes in what was going on, mainly, this was my first ride with my insulin pump on board. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out, but it worked out wonderfully well. 30 minutes before the ride, my blood checked in a 83, I ate a Clif bar (a wholesome 43 carbs), didn’t take any insulin (as I had previously been doing) and I was on my way.
My problems tonight came from not being able to breathe, my nose was clear and I was wearing a Breathe Right strip across it in an attempt to get more air flowing through there, but my breathing patterns never quite evened out. I easily spent the first 6 or so miles completely winded, unable to take a deep breath. If I had to compare it to something, I’d almost say I was hyperventilating. Immediately after a short intake of breath, there was a release. My side started cramping up and I got frustrated because I knew it was because of my breathing. Far too much carbon-dioxide in my system but I wasn’t able to release it when my normal methods. Usually I’d let air out of my lungs and chill before taking another breath but that so wasn’t happening tonight. Despite this, I told Robbie I was fine and that we could keep going and eventually my breathing returned to normal.
At 55 minutes into our ride we had gone 13.5 miles, taking 5 minutes off my only other ride this long in this particular direction. If I let Robbie set the pace we ride a little faster than if I set the pace, at several of our benchmarks we were shaving off time. There was a slight headwind in this direction, slight at this point being maybe 5-10 mph, but it didn’t deter us. I checked my blood here as this was our midpoint for the night, it was 84 (how awesome is that, almost an hour of riding and my blood sugar was virtually the same as when I started). I ate a hammer gel as to not go low later, and we were on our way.
It took us an hour and 10 minutes to cover the same distance heading back. It was a little more miserable, there was a headwind (this is NM, no matter which way you’re headed, there’s a headwind) this time it was easily closer to 20 mph it was a slight deterant and slowed us down considerably. We made an extra stop that we hadn’t made on the way down so I could check my blood again, still 84, and I ate another hammer gel (later I’d see that I didn’t need that one and that I just needed to continue riding).
Stats for this ride:
Distance: 27.4 miles
Ride Time: 2 hrs 5 min
Avg Speed: 13.15 mph
We had a decent ride, and even with the wind we took off 5 minutes from my last ride of the same distance. Robbie wanted to go the extra 6 miles to the end of the trail and back but it was already getting late and the sun would be setting so we didn’t. We plan to do the full 33 miles of the trail on Saturday and I’d say we’re in good shape to get it done. Our routine during the ride is being established, and with just a few quirks to work out I really think that our ride in CA is going to be great.